Stuffed Grape Leaves with Meat and Rice Recipe

No big holiday gathering or pot luck dinner with my family is complete without delicious grape leaves. These amazing little packages of green leaves, beef, and rice take a while to make, but disappear like a flash of lightning in a room full of hungry guests with only a few streaks ofcucumber yogurt sauce left after the frenzy.

When I was younger, I used to ask my mother to make grape leaves and within two days we’d finish a giant pot of them. It wasn’t until I was older and I wanted to share my love of grape leaves with my friends, that I asked my mother for the recipe and made a batch on my own. As it turns out, I learned a painful lesson that day. Making grape leaves if you’re not a seasoned pro, is a time consuming affair. They are worth the effort, but after making them myself, I decided that I could never ask my mother to make them for me again without feeling guilty. As it turns out, my guilt lessened a bit when I had the rare opportunity to sit with my mother and grandmother one summer and roll grape leaves with them. For every one grape leaf I rolled, they rolled three. They rolled a whole pot of grape leaves in minutes when it would have taken me three times as long on my own. Please don’t let that discourage you because with a little practice and less clumsy hands like mine, making grape leaves isn’t very hard at all as long as you keep it simple. You can also make smaller batches or make a ton of them and freeze them in a freezer bag for later use.

With that said, I’m about to lay down some truths for you all right now. This is one of the best grape leaf recipes you will ever see or try. The key is the simplicity of the ingredients and the fact that they aren’t over-spiced, vegetarian, or served cold. It’s an unfortunate fact that there are some terrible grape leaves out there in the world. There are vegetarian grape leaves, which are sometimes edible if made fresh and served hot, but more often than not they’re served cold, loosely wrapped, slimy, and often from a can. A can! 90% of the time, grape leaves found at restaurants are vegetarian and from a can. I almost never order them out and I always ask if they are made in-house. I can’t blame anyone who has tried these horrors from never trying grape leaves again. If this has happened to you, I urge you to subdue your gag reflex and give these grape leaves a try. You won’t be disappointed and you will go back for seconds.

Directions

First, drain the water from the jar of grape leaves and empty out the leaves into a large tupperware container or bowl. Fill the container with water and start to unravel the leaves carefully. Once unraveled, dump the water, and refill the bowl with fresh water to rinse the leaves. Let them sit this way until you’re ready to use them.

Roughly dice up half a large onion so that you have a 1/2 cups worth (that’s more than a 1/2 cup pictured below!).

Place the one pound of ground beef into a large bowl.

Add in the rice, onion, salt and pepper to the beef.

Using your hands (wear latex gloves if you like) mix the ingredients together. Once the ingredients are well incorporated, you might feel like you can’t see much of the rice at all, but that’s normal. The rice will expand when it cooks, so you don’t want to see it right now at this stage.

Sift through the soaking grape leaves and find a few leaves that aren’t ideal (maybe 3-5 leaves). Leaves that aren’t ideal are ones that are really large and veiny (that means they’ll probably make for tougher leaves), leaves that are far smaller than the rest of the bunch, or leaves that are torn. Place those leaves at the bottom of the pot to line it. In addition to lining the pot with leaves, you can also line the pot with a few tomato slices or even slices of onion or all of the above. This keeps the grape leaves from touching the bottom of the pot, but it also adds aroma.

On a large plate, lay down a grape leaf and open it flat.

If the leaf is especially large (like the one above where it takes up most of the plate), cut it in half. You don’t have to do this, but I find that the best grape leaves aren’t too large and aren’t too small.

Place a small amount of the beef mixture on the part of the leaf closest to you (a heaping tablespoon is about right).

Wrap the beef mixture by rolling up the bottom of the leaf (closest to you) over the meat, then just as you cover the meat, fold the right and left sides in towards the center before completing the roll. You want to end up with a tightly wrapped, neat little meat packet. Then place the rolled grape leaf into the bottom of the pot you lined earlier.

Repeat the rolling process until you have one layer deep of rolled grape leaves. At this point, take 4 – 6 cloves of garlic, cut them in half or thirds and spread them out over this level of grape leaves. Repeat this process until you have finished all of the leaves or all of the filling (you may finish one before the other).

It’s fairly common to finish the leaves before finishing all of the meat mixture. If you have a little bit of meat left over, then just roll it into balls and place them on top of the grape leaves. They make for an interesting and tasty variation.

Pour the chicken broth over the grape leaves and carefully place a wide shallow bowl on top of the grape leaves to keep them from floating up during the cooking process.

Cover the pot and bring the broth to a boil. Once boiling, lower the stovetop heat to low or simmer and let the pot simmer for at least an hour, but 2 is ideal.

After the grape leaves finish cooking for 1 – 2 hours, turn off the heat and immediately squeeze one or two limes over the grape leaves (no need to mix the pot). The finished grape leaves will look darker after they are cooked.

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13 thoughts on “Stuffed Grape Leaves with Meat and Rice Recipe”

Aw yay, the stuffed vine leaf recipe! These look delicious. I love the fact that you have more meat than rice in the mixture. Most dolmades I’ve tried are full of rice with only a tiny bit of protein (go Man Fuel!). Definitely trying your version… when I can find a jar of grape leaves. I haven’t seen them around in my local stores (cue: the hunt begins).

Interesting recipe. The Egyptian family recipe I make is very different and I swear it’s the best I’ve ever had. The meat is actually cooked beforehand along with a lot more onions, fresh dill and parsley, and tomato sauce. It’s then mixed with more rice than what’s in your recipe and rolled. I also squeeze the lemon juice on top before covering with a plate and cooking. I’ll have to try yours one day and make the comparison. Great blog ny the way. Cheers.

Hello, Amin! I find your recipe interesting as well. I’ve heard some people make grape leaves with tomato sauce, but I’ve never tried it. I actually don’t know anyone at all that makes it that way, which is funny! I’m not sure if you’d like this recipe or not because it is much simpler in flavor than yours. In this recipe the natural meat and grape leaves flavor are really the stars, which are complimented by the other flavors. I can see why you might use more rice and onion if you are adding more meat or other strong flavors like tomato sauce and dill to balance things out. Personally, I’ve had grape leaves with dill in them, but it’s not my preference. I love dill, but just not for grape leaves. I also don’t squeeze the lemon prior to cooking because I found that sometimes cooking lemon juice too much can give it a strange flavor. Nonetheless, if you have a recipe for the way you make it, I’d love to try it and I’d love to show my mother as well. This is a brand new way to us and people we know. I appreciate you stopping by and sharing your thoughts!

Here’s a tip passed down through my family. Instead of chicken broth, line the bottom of the pan with beef bones and fill pot with water. This serves 2 purposes. It makes beef broth and protects the bottom layer of grape leaves from burning.

Thanks. That’s an interesting idea for sure. The thing with the beef bones is that I imagine two things will happen. The first is that the broth after one hour may just be a little too watery as well as overly flavored by the other ingredients and second, the impurities from the bones (that scum that rises to the top when boiling) would get all over the grape leaves. The bottom of the pot and grape leaves are already protected with that layer of extra leaves. I like the concept of adding more beef flavor, but I’m not sure how it would affect the overall product. Seems like maybe your family has tested it and it works for you though, so that’s great!